tap

What problem does it solve?

Tap solves the challenge of reliably starting, monitoring, and controlling long-running processes by wrapping them with a dedicated runner that captures output in memory and exposes a minimal API to query logs and manage restarts.

Core Features & Use Cases

• In-memory ring buffer: stores recent stdout/stderr lines for fast, deterministic access without log files.
• Unix-domain socket API: remote control of each service via a lightweight HTTP interface.
• Per-service runner: isolates supervision and lifecycle to a single process, enabling predictable restarts and readiness checks.
• Use cases: run a web server or worker, observe logs, restart on failure, or stop services in CI pipelines.

Quick Start

Use tap to run a service, observe logs, and restart when needed. Example: tap run myapp -- node server.js; then tap observe myapp --last 50; if needed, tap restart myapp.